Back in the bedroom, after Aurora had helped her settle and then respectfully, worriedly taken her leave, the first thing Pandora did was rub her wrist, still a bit pale from the recent bloodletting. She turned to Elsa, her voice sincere and self-recriminatory. “You went through so much. It’s my fault for forgetting something so important…”

  “My dy must not bme herself. This is Elsa’s mission.”

  “Alright, not another word about it. Rex. Come, drink.”

  Fresh blood flowed out. Elsa drank in small sips.

  Elsa’s recovery was unnervingly fast. Almost in the blink of an eye, her sickly, translucently pale face once again became radiant and brimming with vitality. And Pandora felt that familiar, slightly dizzy spell of anemia once more. It felt different, giving her own blood and having Elsa drink it… No, no, no, don't think about it, haaaa—… stop thinking…

  After a few deep breaths, Pandora calmed down again. This time, she focused on the sensations in her own body. Perhaps because of the breakthrough, this anemic spell, which should have been especially severe after Elsa’s entire day of “not eating,” was far less intense than it should have been. In fact, its overall impact was much smaller.

  To put it simply, it was a slightly heavier-than-usual feeling of anemia, but not severe.

  Because of this, a thought instantly fshed through Pandora’s mind. As her rank increased, her “capital reserve” had become more substantial. And the “Price” Elsa had to pay for every feeding was constant; it had never changed. So, proportionally, the pressure of paying the Price had lessened considerably.

  However, this wasn't entirely a good thing.

  Because in her cognition, the Price and the benefits were often proportional. A retive decrease in the impact of the Price also meant… the help Elsa could offer her in the future would also decrease, proportionally.

  As she was mulling this over, Pandora noticed a “ruddiness” to Elsa’s complexion that was different from before. It wasn’t a healthy, energetic color. But a disconnected, abnormal flush, like one that would only appear after getting drunk on wine.

  “How do you feel?” Pandora asked.

  “Very… good, my dy.” Elsa’s voice, compared to before, held an extra… hazy, indescribable charm. “It smells… your blood is somewhat different from before.”

  She seemed to be searching for words, trying to use her limited vocabury to describe that wondrous feeling. “On one hand, the energy contained within is much greater. On the other, its taste… has also become sweeter, more intoxicating. If it was honey before, then now it is fermented honey wine, with a kind of intoxication that can make one… feel slightly dizzy and lightheaded.”

  At her words, Pandora wondered if this was reted to that mysterious Witch’s power that had fused into her own bloodline. But she was also a bit surprised. Because, according to the Wizard’s Book, the Witch’s bloodline’s effect on her own body was more inclined towards “stabilizing” the spirit and “calming” the soul. It was an inward-turning power. To think that after passing through her body’s conversion, its effect on Elsa instead became an external one that caused “intoxication”?

  She didn’t get too caught up on this question. Immediately after, a thought moved Pandora, and she tested the boost in stats that Elsa’s dual-sword form gave her. Just as she had assumed, it was completely consistent. If Elsa before had brought her a “massive boost,” allowing her to reach the level of “in peak condition, able to take on two at once,” then now, it was just a “small, moderate boost,” merely “in better condition, but not so much that it would impact performance if she didn’t have this boost.”

  It seemed it was time to begin preparing to give Elsa a wave of “Reforging.”

  The products of 【Myriad Alchemy】 could undergo “Reforging.” She had already known this point during the battle with that second-rank Live Iron Golem. It was just that the resources it required for Elsa to be “Reforged”… she did not have them yet. What she “cked” now was the rarest, and most critical, of all resources—“Soul.”

  As for the other resources, like Flesh, Salt-Gold, and Ether, she was not cking at all. In fact, you could even say… she had more than enough. What she cked most right now was Soul.

  Perhaps because she was thinking about Elsa and “Reforging,” Pandora’s tense spirit, from the fear, found a moment to catch its breath.

  But when she, once again, repyed in her mind the scene of her encounter with that bizarre woman who had falsely cimed the name “Faye,” she… still couldn’t help but feel a wave of spine-chilling horror, rising from the depths of her soul.

  This feeling was different from the life-or-death pressure of facing a second-rank Live Iron Golem, and even different from the despair of facing the cruel truth of the “Orchard World.”

  This woman’s power was too bizarre. It wasn’t something that could be simply described with a word like “powerful.” It was a kind of… indescribable, unearthly strangeness. With a single, soft-spoken sentence, she could completely overwrite a person’s cognition. And the most terrifying part of it was, she didn't even need to do much else.

  Pandora’s own mind was as if it had been captured from the inside, would spontaneously, actively, “fill in the bnks” for her, creating all the needed “facade.” Even when the other was full of logical holes and absurdities, at that moment, she was uncontrolbly finding all sorts of reasonable excuses for the other, forcefully perfecting and fwlessly rationalizing her “persona.”

  She had, with almost no resistance, treated the other as the person she trusted most, cherished most—her own sister.

  And that “Wizard” ability she had just gained, which should have theoretically been adept at countering mental influences… was utterly, completely useless. Like a precision compass that was supposed to guide a ship, completely losing its function before the bizarre continent of unknown magnetic poles, even being drawn in, guiding the clueless crewman toward the abyss’s center.

  If not for that Witch’s Blood that had accidentally fused into her body, arousing her interest and giving her a sliver of “value”… Perhaps, in a single sentence, she would have been hollowed out, all the secrets in her brain stolen, then, just like Aurora and Elsa, have all reted memories erased without a trace.

  The most terrifying thing was—she could not even be certain if the memories in her head right now were real. How much of it… had been carefully altered by her, for some unknown purpose?

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